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https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1060903 Igor vs Timman - Igor was a positional monster (genius)
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https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1131294 Timman - Spraggett What a surprise in the opening! 9....Nxe5, a knight sacrifice, wrestles the initiative from White. A rare game where the diamond pawn formation is a successful roadblock.Comment
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https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1136053 Suttles-Timman Interesting tactics and counter tactics in the opeing. All these last four games are exceptional demonstrations by Canadian players.Comment
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https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1482279 Look at Timman's knights and the sparkling tactics that result.Comment
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https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1141791 Timman's first win against a grandmaster.Comment
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GM Timman was also an endgame composer. He wrote "The Art of the Endgame" [2011 New In Chess] and worked on a revised edition in which he wrote another short Preface in July 2023.
GM Daniel King has a couple of Timman's e/g compositions in a tribute to the late GM. See PowerPlayChess - Jan Timman 1951-2026In December 2010, I decided to write The Art of the Endgame. I
wanted to show systematically, guiding the reader along themes and
genres, why endgame studies are so beautiful and so interesting.
Especially the systematics were important. It had struck me that
most books on endgame studies were quite random collections. My
intention was to reveal the secrets from the world of endgame
studies in 14 chapters. I also had a second intention: in 1991, my
book Schaakwerk II had appeared in Dutch (later translated as
‘Studies and Games’). In the second part of this book, I had
included a number of endgame studies. I wanted to put this material
under the microscope one more time. With the help of the computer
I would establish if the studies were correct, after polishing them up
in some cases.Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.Comment
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The late GM Jan Timman (1951-2026) encountered an exceptional roadblock quite early, on his way to a possible world championship. This was GM Anatoly Karpov, born the same year, 1951, a few months before Timman.
I did know that GM Karpov had a commanding lifetime score against GM Timman in their head-to-head games, but until recently I was unaware of the specific details of the rivalry. In classical games, between 1967 and 2020, a span of 53 years, GM Karpov won 30, drew 64, and lost only 9 games against GM Timman. These figures are from chessgames.com. Now, that is dominance. Perhaps among rivalries between world-class players, in recent times, only the dominance of GM Viktor Korchnoi over GM Mikhail Tal is comparable.
The two future stars first met at the European Junior Championship, 1967-68, in the Netherlands. They first played a short draw in the preliminaries, then Karpov won in the finals on his way to a championship triumph. Karpov, with the assistance of the Soviet chess organization, from that juncture was a step or two ahead of Timman, on their respective paths towards chess achievement. When Karpov acquired the training assistance of GM Semion Furman at the 1968 Soviet Team Championship, that set the stage for a dramatic escalation of the young master's chess strength. Although Timman had qualified for a World Junior Championship tournament appearance before Karpov did (Jerusalem 1967; an event the USSR boycotted because of the 1967 Six Days' War), when Karpov did qualify in 1969 (at that stage the championship was held every two years), he utterly dominated at Stockholm 1969 to claim the championship, and the resultant IM title. Karpov was to qualify as a GM with an excellent performance at Caracas 1970, to become the youngest GM in the world, at age 19. Timman had to wait a few more years before he could reach GM level.
Particularly after World Champion GM Boris Spassky lost the title match to GM Bobby Fischer at Reykjavik 1972, the Soviet chess organization decided that the older generation, which had been defeated by Fischer (GMs Spassky, Petrosian, Taimanov, Tal, Korchnoi, Polugaevsky, Smyslov, Bronstein, and so forth), could no longer successfully compete with the new champion. Instead, the Soviet chess leadership deepened their move towards a 'Karpov Hero Project', as GM Andrew Soltis terms it in his superb 2000 book 'Soviet Chess 1917-1991. The project was to develop Karpov as a new challenger to Fischer. The effort succeeded spectacularly, with GM Karpov becoming World Champion in 1975, when Champion Fischer decided to not defend his title.
The excellent website olimpbase.org, the best site for team chess historical data, which is now back up and available, after an extended period down, featured a tribute article on GM Timman in recent days. In it, they included what they referred to as 'Timman's Immortal Game', Jan's powerful win as Black in an Open Sicilian, from Mar del Plata 1982, when Anatoly was world champion. Jan also won the strong tournament in convincing style.
Although GM Karpov won the world title and held it for ten years, I would venture to assert that GM Timman had far more fun in his life than did GM Karpov!!Comment
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